The state of supply chain carbon footprinting: analysis of CDP disclosures by US firms

Although collaboration and performance measurement are widely recognized as critical for increasing sustainability in supply chains, little is known about how comprehensively firms are currently measuring their supplychain carbon emissions (or Scope 3).Wedevelop away toassess howcompletefirms' reports of Scope 3 emissions are, bycomparing them tobenchmarks based on Environmental Input-Output Life-Cycle Assessment models. We use this approach to evaluate Scope 3 carbon emissions disclosed by many of the largest firms in the United States to CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project). We estimate that, on average, these firms reported 22% of their full Scope 3 emissions in 2013. Our results show that Scope 3 reporting varies widely across industries. We highlight two firms that are able to capture a significant portion of their Scope 3 carbon emissions despite having a large number of suppliers. Although firms are beginning to account for an increasing portion of their supply chain's carbon emissions, there is substantial room for improvement in their measurement and disclosure of Scope 3 emissions. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.